The Bone People (52 page)

"Kia ora." She rearranges herself, back supported by the side of the fireplace, guitar cradled in one arm, bottle conveniently close. She sips whisky slowly. No more throwing down drams, she thinks. It's time for quiet

considered drinking.

He says,

"If I could start from the beginning -- not my beginning, but from the time we became just me and him, when

Hana and Timote died -- you know what I'd do? I'd stop work. Stay home most of the time. I was thinking

yesterday, what a waste it all was... I'd worked hard, pakeha fashion, for nearly six solid years, making

money to make a home. And the one thing I never made was a home... now it's sold, finished, and all I'm left

with is a few thousand dollars. Maybe nothing else at all. Do you think they'll let me keep him?"

The question comes jolting out, bare as a bone, sharp as a razor.

"No," She says it very softly. Then more firmly, "No, they won't.

dear heart, if there's one thing certain, it's that they'll remove from your custody tomorrow. I hate to say this,

but if he was natural son, they'd be reluctant to make him a ward of the or whatever, even now. If he was

properly adopted, it'd be the same as if you'd sired him. But you said things were never finalised--'

He's nodding, the silver tears sliding down his cheeks.

"So in view of the evidence of all the past, um, past abuse on his body, they'll be making very sure you don't

get another chance to dole out more of the same."

She takes another sip of whisky.

"Look at it through their eyes: you no longer have a wife, and you've hurt him badly, in the past as well as

this time. As far as they're concerned, he's not looked after properly, he plays truant, and he's a vandal...

they'll think people who don't know him will make a better job of bringing him up. They think."

Her voice is as level and uninflected as though she's discussing shell nomenclature or how to make mead.

"The pity of it all is that they're wrong... I've been fascinated by you two these past few months. You've got, you had genuine love between you. You've given him a solid base of love to grow from, for all the hardship

you've put him through. You've been mother and father and home to him. And probably tomorrow they'll

read you a smug little homily, castigating you for ill-treatment and neglect. And they'll congratulate

themselves quite publicly for rescuing the poor urchin from this callous ogre, this nightmare of a parent... you

got your lawyer clued up on on all the background? The real background, the one that counts? Being both

parents to him, helping him over his bad dreams, picking him up from all round the countryside, going along

to school to find out what the matter is this time... it all shows you cared deeply. In a negative way, so does

the fact that you beat him. At least, you worried enough about what you considered was his wrongdoing to

try and correct it."

Joe says dully, "I told him a bit."

"Tell him all of it, if there's still time... and if he's good, it may just swing things far enough for the court to appreciate the pressures on you both."

She's been using her voice deliberately, pitching timbre and tone to comfort him. Not giving false hope, or

weeping with him. Not praising him or denigrating him or the boy. Trying to inject a little objectivity, a little

distance, to make the matter a little less hurtful.

"Jesus, I feel so bad about it all." The tears are rolling down unheeded. "I feel so bad."

"I feel as bad. As guilty. As criminal."

"But you didn't do anything--"

The tapu on 'if only' is hereby lifted, soul--

"No? Two things, Joe. Sim came here and kicked in my guitar as you know, but I provoked that. I kept

interrogating him, no other word for it, as to where he'd put my damn bloody knife. When I think back -- and

I've been avoiding doing that -- but now it comes to mind that he was very upset over something and I never

bothered to find out what it was. Just harped on about the knife."

"School," says Joe, staring into his shot glass. "He was in deep trouble there. He had a note on him from Bill Drew saying they were thinking about expelling him."

"It was something, certainly... anyway, when he finally broke under my barrage of questions, he went to hit

me. He did, actually, and it was so unexpected it hurt for a moment. Did I remember what you said, that he'll

eventually fight when he wants you to understand? Did I, hell. I punched him so hard he was down on the

floor a minute catching his breath again. It was only after that, he kicked my guitar. You finished it, but I

started it... if I had shown more understanding, he wouldn't have tried to start a fight with me. He wouldn't

have gone away and vented his anger on the windows. He wouldn't have been picked up by the cops. He

would have been home with you... point two, I started the next stage too. I flayed him with words, and I've

got a vicious tongue... you know what particularly sticks in my craw?"

He shakes his head numbly.

"I said, I hope your father knocks you sillier than you are now, you stupid little bastard. I said many such

pleasantries, all intended to hurt... damn it Joe, I'm just as culpable as you are. More so, in that I could have

stopped it happening and I jumped in to inflame the whole thing. If I'd said, No, don't hit him, or No, wait till

I get round there and we'll talk it out. If I'd said... to hell, I didn't, and there's nothing I can do about it now."

She gulps down the remainder of her drink, and refills the glass.

"I did plenty, e hoa, and I'm not likely to forget any of it. Not least, that when I hung the mike up after talking to you, I knew Simon was in for one hell of a hiding, and I was glad."

She holds the bottle out to him. "The bad part for me is that you're paying and I'm not. You'll have a definite penance, and I'll have only the miasma of memory to endure. Which is plenty in one way, and nothing in

another. Drink up."

Her voice is still cool and detached.

She is making it easy on me, trying to share the blame... but it makes sense. She did have the chance to stop

me thrashing him.

And he recalls the wordless choking of pain the child had made, holding the phone in his ineffectual grip

while Kerewin hit him with words.

Aue, that must have hurt him to hear things like that--

He doesn't feel as leprous with guilt, as isolated and criminal any more. He wipes away his tears with the heel

of his palm, and takes the whisky bottle. Clink clink, and another golden measure poured. He selects himself

a smoke, one of the clove-impregnated Indonesian ones, and lights it on an ember. It crackles and sparks as

he inhales.

"Ah, e hoa, you didn't do much bad... I did so much more."

"The intent is sin as much as the action, and believe you me, if I could have hurt Sim without killing him that afternoon, I would have hurt him... hell, I was wild." Her fingers are plucking the guitar strings lute fashion.

"So stupidly wild... I could buy a thousand guitars like that... it was just that it was special. The second guitar I ever owned -- I literally played the first to death -- and given to me by my mother. I used it as comforter and

cocelebrant and resonance chamber for my thoughts for over twenty years--"

She settles the black guitar-body close to her, and begins to play.

It's a slow haunting tune; melancholy, yet it embraces the listener, drawing one onward rather than down.

He remembers it in the months to come, playing it so often in his mind that when he next picks up a guitar,

his fingers settle into the melody without him meaning them to.

"Pavane for a dead infanta, by Ravel," she says at the music's end. She plays it again and again that night, seeming to have forgotten all the rest of her repertoire.

As Joe drinks more, he becomes garrulous. Several times he goes over the way he beat up the child, seeking

to find a pattern in it, a meaning for what happened. Each time it comes up, he exclaims in wonder,

"You know, that's the first time he's ever hit me? First time, and what a hit," shaking his head, halfpuzzled and halfproud, that Simon had had the forethought to conceal the splinter, and the initiative to use it.

A hit indeed. A little deeper, and the glass shard would have sliced through another artery and bled him dry

before Kerewin's arrival.

"It wasn't that hard but God! did it hurt... I never thought he would go for me like that, not using a knife or anything. He's never even hit me before... he fights sometimes, beforehand, you've got to struggle with him

but he never tried to hurt me. He always gives up, he always does what he's told. So I never looked for it to

happen... e Kere, when he started moving his hands I thought he was going to say something about Bill

Drew's note and then wham. Oath, it went in so easy, he didn't have to push. Just like a knife into hot butter,

whizz and there it was, deep in my gut and me bleeding

like a stuck pig. I was so mad he'd thumped me back, ah Jesus I just hit him as hard as I could till he went

out. Then I went down too."

"You know what?" he asks yet again, on the last recital, and she shakes her head tiredly. She has become

more and more sober as the night has worn on. "I think I was trying to beat him dead," says Joe. "I think I was trying to kill him then."

He says something in passing that Kerewin wishes he had never revealed. A few words, but they make for

horror.

He says, "I don't think I'm the only one that's hurt him. He had some bloody funny marks on him when he

arrived."

He falls asleep before dawn.

She watches the moon draw away to the west, and the southern cross take a header down the south horizon.

Orion pales to a distant ice glitter, and one by one, his stars go out.

The sky flushes brilliant crimson.

Red sky in the morning. Warning. O I know it's only weather

words, but...

watching the blood sky swell and grow, dyeing the rainclouds ominously, making the far edge of the sea

blistered and scarlet.

Dawn, and in the east, another star dies.

It made the national news on Friday evening.

"And in Taiwhenuawera today, a man was sentenced to three months' imprisonment for what prosecuting

counsel called a savage and brutal attack on a defenceless handicapped child. However, the magistrate, Mr P.

S. Seward, commented that the child involved could hardly be called defenceless since he had stabbed his

foster father, Joseph Gillayley, in the stomach during the assault. Gillayley, a year old labourer, spent two

weeks in hospital recovering from the wound. His seven year old foster son has been removed from his

custody which, as Mr Seward remarked drily, will be a move beneficial to both parties.

The government intends to introduce new legislation during the coming session which will..."

snap.

And that's the end of the news. She stood up and flexed her shoulder muscles.

Time to hit the road, Holmes. Time to get gone.

She wondered if she would still be alive three months from now.

She folded the stretchers and left them outside under a canvas for Piri.

She packed away the sleeping bags, and cleared out all the remaining food.

Have a feast, gulls--

She stowed her backpack into a large suitcase, added a few clothes, all her remaining smokes, the last of the

bottle of Drambuie, Simon's rosary and three books.

One is the Book of the Soul, the one she normally keeps under lock and key.

One is the Concise Oxford Dictionary.

The last is peculiarly her own.

It is entitled, in hand-lettered copper uncials, "Book of Godhead", and the title page reads,

"BOG: for spiritual small-players to lose themselves in."

It contains an eclectic range of religious writing.

The Diamond Sutra and The Wisdom of the Idiots.

The Tao te Ching, and Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love.

The Bardo Thedol, and extracts from Buber's Hasidism.

The first, second, and fourth wings of the I Ching, and Hahlevi's Tree of Life.

Selections from the Upanishads and the works of the sixteenth century Beguine, Hadewych.

Teilhard de Chardin's Hymn of the Universe, and Reps's Zen Flesh, Zen Bones.

The Book of Job, and Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon.

The New Testament of Jesus Christ, and Masnawi by the Sufi, Jalal-uddin al Rumi.

It has illustrations. Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man. Blake's Ghost of a Flea. A drawing of Pallas Athene she'd

made after a dream. Thirty mandates, from the Grand Terminus to one she'd created three years ago, a steady

indrawing of spirals and psirals and stars.

It was a book she had designed to cater for all the drifts and vagaries of her mind. To provide her with

information, rough maps and sketches of a way to God.

She has a feeling her need for the numinous will increase dramatically from now on.

Left bereft, go sift the wide expanse of wind... take issue with any straw that blows across your path and

conjure hopes from

sticks that lie in the sand. Soul, your hopes are my hopes and my hopes are insane. So the meaning and

signpost for the journey is Hope Obscure. And the sign is a ghost, still whining and bound in a cart.

There's a fine mist falling and the world is close about her. The truncated mass of the Tower looms behind.

The sea is hushed.

The suitcase, and the Ibanez in its travelling case, are sitting by the locked Tower door.

She waits patiently under an umbrella for the night to become complete.

She has made a torch of rags and tow soaked in kerosene, wrapped round a billet of wood. It waits at her feet.